1712 – Jalees

Jalees believes in the “abundance mindset”. This is the thought that with human intelligence we can turn a limited amount of raw materials into an unlimited amount of resources. This is the thought that you enrich me, and I enrich you. This is completely the opposite of the “scarcity mindset” which says there is a limited amount. If I give you something, than I am poorer. And I need to go out and lay claim to everything I can so that I have something for me.

It is the “scarcity mindset” that Robert Zubrin called one of the “bad ideas” that lead to World War I and World War II. And if we are not careful, the scarcity mindset will lead to more conflict and less for all of us. Robert Zubrin likes to say that there are no “natural resources” there are only raw materials. It is human intelligence that can take a raw material and turn it into a resource. And every brain that we can get to think about the problem, the richer we will all be.

But the scarcity mindset is hammered into us from pre-school. We are in an artificial competition with our classmates. It does not matter how much you know in school, it matters how much MORE you know. Therefore if you want to be first in your class, you have no incentive to improve the other people in your class. In fact you have the exact opposite incentive.

Also, our schools teach abstract things. Not practical things. Students need to work and do actual productive things. Like cook the meals, repair the buildings, run a farm, figure out how to generate electricity, build cars, boats, and airplanes, and through all these activities the math, language, science, and engineering can be taught. Through these activities the related history can be touched on. And literature can be explored.

We could do so much more if we could only unleash the potential in ourselves and the potential in each other.